AMERICAN CLASSICS STEPHEN ALBERT In Concordiam • TreeStone Ilkka Talvi, Violin • Lucy Shelton, Soprano • David Gordon, Tenor Seattle Symphony • New York Chamber Symphony Gerard Schwarz Stephen Albert (1941-1992) the woodwinds’ music. Albert now begins to develop this memories they share. Albert’s orchestral setting develops In Concordiam • TreeStone theme, the music growing increasingly energetic until it both the “rain music” and the clarinet arabesque in a reaches a cadenza for the solo instrument. The composer movement that is as freely associative as its text. During the 1970s and 1980s, two important trends In Concordiam, a composition for violin and orchestra, now revisits each of his ideas, beginning with the violin’s A Grand Funferall, the second song, combines emerged in American music as alternatives to what struck reveals the range and complexity of Albert’s style. The theme but touching on the trumpet fanfare, the bell somber and antic music to create an air of raucous many observers as the arcane and hermetic high- work unites angular, dissonant writing with mellifluent sonorities and other elements. In the final minutes of the surrealism. The scene is a wake for the deceased Tristan modernism that had come to dominate composition after harmonies having clear tonal foundations. Albert initially piece, these different elements join together in seemingly and Iseult, but a truncated funeral dirge and fragments of the middle of the twentieth century. The first of these new wrote the piece in 1986 and revised it two years later, joyful accord, the violin exultantly reiterating a signature Latin liturgy given out by the tenor are overwhelmed by a developments was the “minimalism” pioneered by Steve during his Composer in Residence tenure with the Seattle five-note figure belonging to its theme and leading its children’s ditty, a bit of parlor song and generally Reich, Philip Glass and others. The second was what Symphony. colleagues quite literally to harmony in the form of a excessive exuberance. came to be called “The New Romanticism.” The composition’s title indicates something of the radiant A major chord at the conclusion. The third song, Sea Birds, brings a marked change of The latter tendency was, in some ways, the more musical workings of the piece. Albert noted that different Stephen Albert repeatedly drew inspiration from the tone. Its text recalls the ocean voyage during which surprising. In reclaiming not only certain features of groups of instruments within the orchestra have writing of James Joyce. Among his compositions based Tristan and Iseult succumbed to their fatal passion, traditional harmony but the dramatic rhetoric of proprietary thematic material. Trumpets, metal on Joyce’s works are the cantata Distant Hills, with texts imagining the lovers’ first kiss as seen by birds flying over nineteenth-century composition, the practitioners of “The percussion, violins, low strings, woodwinds and horns all from Ulysses; the song cycle To Wake the Dead and the their ship. The first sounds evoke the lonely vessel on the New Romanticism” explicitly rejected a central tenet of sound distinct ideas. The solo violin serves, Albert Pulitzer Prize-winning Symphony RiverRun, both water. The more animated music that follows suggests modernism, its revolt against the musical past. In explained, as a “mediator” between these instrumental prompted by Finnegans Wake; and TreeStone, also the fluttering and swooping of the titular birds. particular, these neo-Romantic composers sought to groups and the thematic material associated with them. In written as a response to Joyce’s final novel. Albert The next two songs, Tristopher Tristan and Fallen reclaim for music a degree of emotional expression they time, the composition’s diverse ideas come together composed the latter work in 1983, concurrently with Griefs, also view the legendary lovers from an unusual felt had been sacrificed by their high-Modernist harmoniously, in several senses of that word. The Symphony RiverRun. The two pieces are related not only perspective. Their texts are from a chapter of Finnegans predecessors. resulting movement from disparity to concord explains, in their Joycean inspiration but through shared musical Wake in which two washerwomen stand on opposite Stephen Albert was perhaps the most accomplished and is explained by, the composition’s Latin title, which material. Indeed, Albert described them as “adaptations of banks of the Liffey, gossiping as they launder. Their pioneer of “The New Romanticism.” A native of New York, best translates as “into harmony.” each other.” discourse, which flows as freely as the river between Albert began composing during his adolescence under The arresting trumpet fanfare that begins the piece is Scored for soprano and tenor accompanied by a them, touches on a scandalous liaison of young cousins, the tutelage of Elie Siegmeister. He subsequently studied echoed by bells and plucked strings, then by woodwinds small orchestra, TreeStone treats Joyce’s gloss on the these being Tristan and Iseult. In the first song, restless at the Eastman School of Music, the Philadelphia and finally by the solo violin. This music is strident and legend of Tristan and Iseult, a recurring motif in rhythms intimate the eager gossip of the women. The Academy of Music and the University of Pennsylvania. He decidedly modern in its harmonic contours. But Finnegans Wake. The tale of the ill-fated lovers “hovers ensuing song, Fallen Griefs, is more sober, touching on also spent time in Stockholm, where he worked with Karl- immediately the violins and violas answer quietly with a ghost-like throughout the novel,” Albert observed, “never the sorrows of she who, Joyce wrote, “wove a garland for Birger Blomdahl. Albert’s music quickly gained series of soft, widely spaced chords that convey quiet wholly perceived but nearly always felt.” Joyce, the her hair ... of fallen griefs of weeping willow.” recognition, earning the composer commissions from the mystery. As these harmonies continue to unfold, the composer continues, renders “an abbreviated, irreverent The final song takes its text from the most famous New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, The violin, in a rough-hewn cadenza, ruminates on the and often deranged version” of the medieval romance, portion of Finnegans Wake, a long passage known as Philadelphia Orchestra and other major ensembles, an implications of its initial utterance. Albert’s superimposing “communicated in coded fragments ... challenging our Anna Livia Plurabelle. As darkness descends over the appointment as Composer in Residence with the Seattle of a restive, angular soliloquy against seemingly reason and powers of intuition.” river, the elder washerwomen grow weary. One Symphony Orchestra and a faculty post at The Juilliard imperturbable harmonies in the strings calls to mind the Albert prefaces the first of the six songs that comprise complains, “I feel as old as yonder elm.” The other feeling School, and a series of impressive awards, most notably musical allegory of Charles Ives’ The Unanswered TreeStone with an instrumental prologue. Here a as “heavy as yonder stone.” Slowly, they become that the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for music. Question, which seems very much the progenitor of this shimmering texture of metal percussion, high-pitched which they have named, the first transformed into a tree, Albert produced more than a dozen orchestral passage. pizzicato and isolated woodwind sounds create an her companion into a stone. Tree and stone, TreeStone: a compositions, as well as works for smaller ensembles and With the conclusion of the soloist’s cadenza, the atmospheric “rain music.” A wistful clarinet arabesque symbol of eternity and enduring nature, which Albert for voices. This impressive body of work undoubtedly focus turns to the orchestra — specifically, to the serves as a transition to the song I am Leafy Speafing, in intimates poetically in the final measures of the piece. would have grown in size and scope had the composer woodwinds, who trace song-like lines in unison and in rich which the soprano presents the voice of the Liffey River lived to develop it. Tragically, Albert died in an automobile contrapuntal tapestries. The solo violin rejoins the flowing through Dublin. In Joyce’s characteristically Paul Schiavo accident in December 1992, at age 51. proceedings, spinning out a new theme loosely related to allusive language, she sings to the city, calling forth David Gordon Ilkka Talvi Since his operatic début with Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1973, David Gordon has Finnish-born violinist Ilkka Talvi was initially self-taught and later studied with famous forged a distinguished and innovative career as opera and concert singer, recitalist teachers in Helsinki, Vienna (Odnoposoff), Paris (Bouillon) and in the United States and seminar presenter. A concert artist of international stature, he has appeared as (Heifetz at USC and Galamian at the Curtis Institute). Talvi has performed as soloist featured guest soloist with virtually every major North American symphony orchestra, and in recital in many European countries, as well as in many American cities. At the and with other prestigious orchestras and music festivals on four continents. His age of twenty he became a faculty member at the Sibelius Academy, Finland’s concert repertoire spans eight centuries of music and eight languages. Praised as leading conservatory. He has made numerous recordings, many of which have been “One of the world’s great Bach tenors” (Chicago Tribune), he has been heard world premières, including concertos and other works by Bach, Hindemith, Diamond, worldwide in hundreds of performances of J.S. Bach’s music. As soloist, lecturer, and Albert, Klami, Piston, Creston and many others, on the Delos, Nonesuch, Angel, master-class presenter, he has appeared at every major North American Bach Naxos and Finlandia labels. He has performed regularly as soloist in concertos by Festival, including serving as dramaturge of the annual Carmel Bach Festival, and at Photo courtesy of Yuen Lui Studio Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Hindemith, Shostakovich and Glazunov, among Bach festivals in Europe, South America and Japan.